THE GOLDEN WORDS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH - BY: S.M.PASHA

“THE GOLDEN WORDS OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH IN HIS ESSAY ENTITLED “CITY NIGHT PIECE” APPLY, WITH SLIGHT MODIFICATION, TO THE TRAGIC PLIGHT OF INDIAN MUSLIMS”

by

S.M.PASHA

The departure of the Britishers, who stepped into our Motherland as petty merchants seeking our patronage and through all sorts of foul means, captured power and kept us captive has, unfotrtunately, become a curse in disguise. Verily, Fortune turns like a wheel which lifts one person and sets down another. Fortune saw to it that at last on August 15,1947 the UNION JACK is lowered once for all in all masts in the country and the Triranga goes up instead. In simpler terms, we achieved INDEPENDENCE. Our Nation became a FREE Nation and we its FREE CITIZENS. It is pleasant to hear this story but is it true that all of us Indians are free? No. Certainly not. All of us, Indians, are NOT free citizens. Some of us continue to be in bondage. And the “some of us” are the members of the Muslim minority community and the Dalits amongst the majority community.

How they are suffering can be told by quoting by quoting almost verbatim Goldsmith’s words with slight modifications. The economic condition of the members of the Muslim minority community is going down not just year by year but month by month; week by week and day by day with the result that, because of Sangh Parivar sponsored and Sangh Parivar backed communal riots in which the members of the majority community, thanks to their numerical strength and political patronage, emerge victorious and good many of the members of the minority community are constrained to make streets their couch to find a repose from wretchedness at the doors of the opulent. Their circumstances are too humble to expect redress and their distresses are too great even for pity. Their wretchedness excites rather horror than pity. Alas! The majority community controlled Government bestows on them reproaches and not relief. The slightest misfortune of the members of the majority community and their most imaginary uneasiness are aggravated with all power of eloquence by it and engages its attention whilst the members of the minority communities weep unheeded, persecuted by every subordinate species of tyranny and they find enmity in every law.

Social activists like the writer of this write-up can only lament: “Why was my heart formed with so much sensibility? Why was my fortune not adapted to its impulse? Alas! Tenderness, without the capacity of relieving makes us more wretched than the wretched members of the minority communities”

---- penned, with due apologies to one of the greatest writers in English language and literature OLIVER GOLDSMITH.